


A Bit More Titillating

by Green



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-25
Updated: 2010-09-25
Packaged: 2017-10-12 04:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Green/pseuds/Green
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Forced to spend time together, professors Potter and Snape discuss Thoreau.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bit More Titillating

"I don't like this," Harry grumbled. He frowned and pulled at the cuff of his robe, and fidgeted a little on the dark green sofa. Being forced to spend time with Snape seemed a completely unfair prerequisite for employment. As far as Harry knew, this was the first time one professor had ever been _forced_ to spend time with another.

Snape didn't look up from his book, just answered, "So you've said."

Harry huffed. "Don't you think this is a complete waste of time?" he asked. "I would have thought you'd be storming around here, ranting about the indignity of it all."

"I have better things to do with my time than indulge in childish theatrics," Snape said blandly, not looking up.

Harry thought of all the times Snape had done more than _indulge_ that way and snorted to himself. No matter how much time had passed, or how Snape had proven himself to be on the Order's side, Harry would never forget Snape's almost high-pitched proclamation of, _"How dare you use my own spells against me! Me, the Half-Blood Prince!"_ It sounded like the dialogue of some mad scientist in a Muggle B-movie. 'Theatrics' was the perfect word for much of Harry's memories of the man.

"Are you just going to sit there and read all night?" It was bad enough they were being forced to spend time together, thanks to McGonnagal's wild theories of friendship, but if Harry had to sit on Snape's couch with nothing at all to do but watch the man read for another moment, there would soon be hex-marks: on the sofa, on the book, and especially on Snape.

 _Harry_ had no problem with 'indulging' in childish theatrics.

There was no reaction other than the slight tightening of Snape's lips. It was maddening. Snape _always_ responded to Harry, in _some_ way.

"What're you reading?" Harry said. It was probably suicidal to be goading Snape into a conversation, but he'd try anyway. It was the Gryffindor in him. Or the inner mascochist.

"Walden," Snape said. The word was terse, but the man still didn't look up.

"Oh!" Harry said with false brightness. "I know that one." _There it is!_ he thought with triumph as he met Snape's incredulous gaze. "That's the one about the mountain, right?"

Snape frowned. "Mountain?" he repeated suspiciously.

"Yeah, Walden's Mountain! And there's the big house, and the huge family! John Boy is the writer," he added in his most serious voice. He stifled the insane giggle that wanted to bubble up from his chest.

The breaths Snape took now were deliberately deep and slow. Harry had never done well with Occlumency, but he thought he was doing well with keeping the glee out of his eyes.

Unfortunately, Snape had always been as good at reading Harry as he was at brewing potions and casting wordless magic. "You know very well it is _not_ ," he said with narrowed eyes. He seemed as if he were about to launch into a tirade, and Harry braced himself for the verbal onslaught. But then Snape paused and a wicked glitter appeared in his black eyes. The light was like the surface of deep, dark water, and made Harry feel suddenly as if his stomach and his heart were jostling each other for room in his throat.

"Hmm," Harry tried to say, but it came out more like, 'Eerp!' He coughed, trying to cover the flustered sound, but Snape's lips twisted up wickedly for a moment before he turned back down to his book. _Damn him!_ Harry thought, as his fear passed and morphed into disappointment.

"Why don't you read it to me?" Harry asked innocently. It was a reasonable suggestion. Snape was reading, Harry was bored, and maybe Harry wouldn't be so bored if he had something interesting to listen to. Snape's voice was interesting, he'd always thought, as long as he wasn't shouting and sneering. Although the sneering was okay as long as it wasn't directed at Harry or his friends. The one time Harry had heard Snape sneer at Lucius Malfoy, during a duel a few months before, he had even thought it was a little ... intriguing.

"I think not, Potter," Snape murmured. "I am fortunate to no longer have to deal your lackluster intellect my classroom. I have no desire to attempt imparting knowledge to you yet again."

"My intellect doesn't lack any luster," Harry retorted. He hoped he didn't sound as petulant to Snape as he did to himself.

"Hmm," Snape replied. He turned a page slowly, as if he was caressing the edges of it and was loathe to let it go. Then, in a smooth, even tone, he began to read. " _A very agricola laboriosus was I to travellers bound westward through Lincoln and Wayland to nobody knows where; they sitting at their ease in gigs, with elbows on knees, and reins loosely hanging in festoons; I the home-staying, laborious native of the soil. But soon my homestead was out of their sight and thought. It was the only open and cultivated field for a great distance on either side of the road, so they made the most of it; and sometimes the man in the field heard more of travellers' gossip and comment than was meant for his ear: "Beans so late! peas so late!" -- for I continued to plant when others had begun to hoe -- the ministerial husbandman had not suspected it. "Corn, my boy, for fodder; corn for fodder."._ "

Harry blinked. And blinked again. "Er. A little dry, innit?" he said when his lackluster intellect recovered.

"It's Thoreau," Snape said with a minute shrug, as if that explained everything.

The name, at least, sounded familiar. "Oh, right. He, er, wrote things." That was about the sum of what he knew about Thoreau, though. Except ... "Didn't he write something about a golden pond?"

" _On Golden Pond_ is a play by Ernest Thompson," Snape said with a frown. " _Walden_ Pond is what you have it confused with."

Harry blushed. Deliberately confusing Walden with _The Waltons_ was one thing, but ignorantly confusing one form of literature with another, without purpose or intent, made him feel a bit stupid.

"Perhaps you require something a bit more titilating," Snape said, drawing the last word out so that it sounded strangely ... erotic. In a very, very _dirty_ way. " _This seed I regularly and faithfully procured from the village, till at length one morning I forgot the rules, and scalded my yeast; by which accident I discovered that even this was not indispensable,--for my discoveries were not by the synthetic but analytic process,--and I have gladly omitted it since, though most housewives earnestly assured me that safe and wholesome bread without yeast might not be, and elderly people prophesied a speedy decay of the vital forces._ " He looked up at Harry as if he expected him to be following along.

Harry nodded, as if he were thinking about what he'd heard. "So, he, erm. Decided to stick with flat bread? Pita or something?" By this time, Snape's lips were twitching as if he were barely suppressing a smile, so Harry took heart and went on. "You ever have pita bread, Snape? I like it with hummas. It's kinda smooth in your mouth and ... I don't know. So, I guess Thoreau figured out he didn't need yeast, and just ate however he wanted, huh?"

"Yes, Mr. Potter, he certainly did," Snape said. His eyes were dancing with something that could have been amusement. Dark amusement, though, and Harry wasn't sure what exactly had seemed like a joke. Snape cleared his throat, and it sounded like half a laugh. " _Yet I find it not to be an essential ingredient, and after going without it for a year am still in the land of the living; and I am glad to escape the trivialness of carrying a bottle-full in my pocket, which would sometimes pop and discharge its contents to my discomfiture. It is simpler and more respectable to omit it. Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances._ "

Harry frowned. "That part about his bottle bursting sounds a little ... erm. Well. Not quite what I was expecting, anyway."

This time, Snape didn't hide his smile. Harry noticed that the light dancing in his eyes was genuine, and the smile softened Snape's features so that he looked less like the nasty, horrible man from Harry's childhood and more like a bloke you could take to a pub and share a pint with. It was interesting, especially when Snape tucked a long piece of his hair behind his ear so that it no longer hung limply in his face. Harry had never seen that particular gesture before, and he was struck by just how _human_ Snape looked, sitting there, smiling at him, his dark eyes gleaming. "Do go on, Mr. Potter."

Harry frowned. "It's Professor Potter, you know."

"Yes, and you are so conscientious with titles yourself," Snape drawled.

Point. "You could call me Harry." If nothing else but to hear his name in that dark, almost melodious voice.

"I could," Snape said, but he emphasized the word as if he were giving a grammar lesson.

"I mean, you _may_ call me Harry," Harry said, feeling a bit of a blush creep into his face. "That might be ... good. And it would show the headmistress that her two favorite professors are finally on better terms." He shouldn't feel as if he tried to excuse it, should he? Maybe he should tell the man that he _wanted_ him to call him by name.

Snape's smile dimmed a bit, and Harry didn't know what he'd heard in Harry's fumbling words that had made that happen. Maybe because he didn't think Harry really wanted to be that friendly. No, that didn't seem like Snape at all. But still, "I would like you to call me Harry, and not just because of how it would look." There. Just in case.

"I do not need my delicate sensibilities patronized, Potter," Snape said a bit sharply, but Harry was surprised to note that the gleam, which had dimmed with the smile, returned. Along with something else that lurked in that dark gaze, something familiar to Harry but which he never thought he'd see in Snape's eyes: genuine interest. Attraction, maybe.

"I know you don't," Harry murmured. His mouth felt ridiculously dry all of a sudden, and he licked his lips in a quick, nervous gesture. Snape's eyes flashed to Harry's mouth and just as quickly darted away. Which made Harry's face heat even more. "I ... we were talking about yeast?"

Were Snape's eyes _smoldering_? Merlin. Maybe Harry was imagining it, but that was precisely the sort of look he got from a man when he was about to be, well, fucked. Well fucked. The thin lips were smiling again, but the expression was more closed this time, with more heat in wicked intent behind it. Harry felt his heart pick up speed, and it felt infinitely harder to breathe, suddenly.

"Ah, yes," Snape said, and settled back further in his chair. He wasn't _sprawling_ or anything like that -- Harry couldn't imagine what Snape would look like doing something so undignified -- but he looked a bit more relaxed, but also somehow as if he were poised that way for a reason, like he was watching Harry with _intent_. Harry felt even more out of sorts. He almost wished he could run away, but that would leave the wrong impression. He wasn't _scared_ , after all. In fact, his body was telling him he was so _not scared_ , that his palms were beginning to sweat, along with his temples, and the back of his neck was prickling hotly, and his heart was pounding in his ears. Only, no, it wasn't fear, unless fear was what really did it for him, because his cock was getting stiff and uncomfortable, too. How much longer was this going to last? Because all he wanted to do, besides run away, was run away to his _rooms_ , where he could wrap his hand around his confused cock and let off a little of this nervous excitement that was increasing with every second Snape looked at him like _that_.

"Masturbation, _Harry_ ," Snape said silkily, and Harry nearly jumped off the sofa.

"W-what?"

"The passage is about masturbation. Keep in mind that he was a Muggle, and this was 1854," Snape said in that smooth, calm voice, as if he hadn't just said _masturbation_. Twice. "One morning, he forgot himself -- forgot the social and religious stigmas of his time, that told him that sex was something filthy and degraded the mind. He 'scalded his yeast' -- that is, he--"

"Wanked," Harry blurted. His face felt as though it was on fire.

Snape showed his crooked teeth in a grin. It should have been a ghastly sight, but Harry only found him that much more interesting. It didn't last long, as though Snape thought a grin was unseemly. "Quite," he said, amusement coloring his voice and making it even more ... something. Alluring? Could that word really be applied here? _Yes, definitely_ , thought Harry.

"I don't really understand the rest. About the simple respect?"

"Hmm," Snape said thoughtfully. "Thoreau was a philosopher. I imagine he thought the distraction of constant erections and wet dreams was more a hindrance to his attitudes of self-denial than simply taking care of the problem on a regular basis. Once he discovered nothing horrifying would happen to him if he indulged, it was somewhat of an epiphany to him."

"Not a real cheery bloke, was he?" Harry said. "So he just ... kept scalding his yeast because it made his life easier, and not because he, er, enjoyed it?"

"So it is assumed," Snape said.

Harry snorted. "And I was starting to think he'd had a bit of sense. He used all those fancy words and all, but he wasn't really all that _smart_ , was he?"

"Are you saying that a truly intelligent man should take great delight in his cock, Harry?" Snape purred.

Was that a squeak that just came from Harry's mouth? "Er, I mean. Well. Yeah, I guess?" He barely knew what he was saying, because his mind was replaying 'cock' over and over again in Snape's voice. Cock. _Cock_.

Snape smiled lazily -- Harry hadn't known he could do that -- and set his book aside. "Thoreau preferred his masturbation to be of the more _mental_ kind. I believe he spent his life doing just that," he said.

"Bit of a wanker, then, huh?" Harry said with a grin he hoped didn't look to forced. But Snape grinned back -- wow, he actually looked _good_ like that. Not gorgeous, or beautiful, but sexy in his own way. "And all that talk about beans and peas and corn before was a little boring. You'd think mental m-masturbation would be a little more interesting." He couldn't believe he'd stumbled over the word. "So why do you read him, if he's a wanker?"

"Surely you do not believe you should only immerse yourself in those things with which you agree with completely?" Snape chided.

"I'm immersing myself with you, aren't I?" Harry said before he could stop himself.

He expected Snape's uncharacteristic good mood to leave, then, thanks to Harry's thoughtlessness, but Snape merely smirked. "You call this immersion?"

"Not -- not really. But it hasn't been terrible, has it, Snape? Talking?"

"It has been ... less tortuous than I had thought it would be," Snape said slowly, eyeing him with speculation. " _Harry_."

That kind of high praise made Harry's heart leap, and he smiled. "Severus."

"Indeed," Snape said, slight satisfaction rippling through the word.

Harry cast _Tempus_ , and realized with a start that it was late. "Er, I'm sorry, but I have papers to grade," he said. "But we'll do this again?"

"I believe Minerva said two hours each night for a fortnight," Snape said, standing.

"Good," Harry said, inwardly excited that he got to come back and do this again. And again. He stood, too, and Snape walked him to the door. It was a politeness he wasn't expecting, but then again, Snape hadn't been exactly as he'd expected at all tonight. "I'll see you tomorrow, Sn-Severus."

"You shall," came the answer.


End file.
